first 2 minutes of the first tank, this little piece snapped. luckily i was right side up with some altitude and got her down in one piece.

note to Align: the weight savings you gained by milling out that lighting hole is not justified. luckily this only cost me $25 to fix. but, it still cost me a day of 70°F weather, 2mph winds, a big blue sky, and a field practically to myself boo

Yup, I've seen it happen to another pilot while in flight. It typically means you have a bad tail vibration and the part failed due to fatigue. I would suggest you look over your machine and find the root cause.

Your right the the weight it safes is insignificant. Align has to rethink some things. Might mean a little price increase, but I'm sure people will not mind, to trade off 5$ for more quality.

Team Synergy, Rail blades, Team Scorpion, V-Team

you still get out to fieldstone? I work every saturday or id show up with my 700

this happened saturday morning. just got around to fixing it today since it was so windy. and, ya i was at fieldstone. didnt think i could make it back to the pavement, so i autoed in past all the rubble in the tall grass. i could barely see it...it did tip over in the last few seconds of spooldown, but no damage.

Yup, I've seen it happen to another pilot while in flight. It typically means you have a bad tail vibration and the part failed due to fatigue.

thanks for the advice. this was actually the first tank with a well-broken in OS91 HZ. i built this heli with a new novarossi .91. after 2 gallons of breakin i simply could not get it to run right, and vibes were HORRIBLE. with this motor the heli was rock solid and purred like a kitten. but, i'm afraid i may have to keep an eye on this bird for a while for all the damage the nova caused.

Have Rotors, Will Fly!

this was just a catestrophic failure. didnt try to repair, it just snapped.

endpoints were fine. this is a brand new heli (2 gallons thru the nova trying to break in/tune). vbar had been gone through very carefully...no binding on the tail. i had actually used a feeler gauge to keep a few thousandths on both ends. so i'm pretty confident i wasnt overdriving the arm.

i'm sure it was just the vibes from the original motor. my main point was that Align really didnt need to mill out the lightning hole. it is just begging for trouble, IMO anyway.

if it ain't broke, break it.

hmmm...

A part like that usually doesn't just break for the fun of it. Even though it is pretty narrow. It just doesn't carry that kind of load. I've never had an issue with it. My guess is it probably cracked when it was milled. The vibes from that Nova probably exagerated the break. No point it dwelling on the matter...you saved your heli and it'll probably never hapeen again. Nice save

Mellisa

if the tail had vibe levels that high you would be loosing screws left and right from the boom supports, motor mount bolts , muffler bolts and what nots.... the fuel would be nothing but foam. i cant see an aluminum mount that thick be the only part on the heli to break completely off and show no other signs of a high freq vibe.

the only other thing is what Mike said

Looking at where it broke, perhaps you had your endpoints a bit over extended on the pushrod and it stressed those points causing it to crack.

the aft end of the mount appears to have broke first then the front side breaking by being pulled forward IMO